Government

The Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Japan Press Conference, November 24, 2020

On November 24, 2020, Governor Koike delivered a speech titled “Tokyo 2020 and Beyond: Initiatives for a Safe and Secure Tokyo” to the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Japan (FCCJ). Her talk began with how Tokyo had kept COVID-19 infections rates low despite its aging population, as well as talking about direct and indirect countermeasures.

Topics included:

  • High awareness of adherence to social norms and public hygiene among the general populace, including a long tradition of mask-wearing
  • Avoidance of the 3-C’s (Closed Spaces, Crowded Places, and Close Conversation)
  • Use of hotels by TMG for mild or asymptomatic cases to ease hospital burden
  • Providing facility for patients(External link) who hope to be with their pets while they recover
  • Creation of the Tokyo Center for Infectious Disease Control and Prevention (Tokyo iCDC)
  • Increasing public health staffing, including administrators and public health nurses, and expanding the contact tracing team for active research, etc.
  • Requesting shops, restaurants and various other facilities to display rainbow-colored COVID-19 safety stickers(External link) to show they have taken proper infection countermeasures
  • Launched the open site “COVID-19 Information Website” and live information “COVID-19 Monitoring Report(External link)” at an early stage
  • Supporting international community with simplified Japanese and multilingual messaging(External link)
  • Support for telework, flextime and other commuting methods to reduce rush-hour crowding
  • Implementing a sustainable recovery, establishing a “new normal” with COVID-19
  • Introducing use of robots in a variety of functions, not only to combat infectious diseases, but also to contribute to solutions for labor shortages

Governor Koike then turned her focus to the Global Financial City Tokyo vision

  • Tokyo Financial Awards and promotion of ESG investment
  • Continuing issuance of Green Bonds
  • FinCity.Tokyo and Team Invest Tokyo as public-private initiatives to help business people expand operations into Tokyo
  • Launched Tokyo’s business consultation center in Hong Kong as the first overseas contact point
  • Tokyo ranked best city in the world to live in, according to US financial magazine “Global Finance”

The governor concluded with discussion of the 2020 Games, mentioning the success of recent international gymnastics competition in Tokyo and the opening of the Aquatics Center venue, as well as the encouragement IOC President Bach had offered. She ended with expressing her desire for Tokyo 2020 to serve as a symbol of hope, solidarity, and recovery, much as Antwerp 1920 did after WWI and the flu pandemic.

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